


Betrayal

by rendcollective



Series: Pray to Me Instead [1]
Category: Christian Bible, Christian Bible (New Testament), Christian Bible (Old Testament), Christian Lore, Pray to Me Instead
Genre: Bible, Biblical References, Big Brother Lucifer, Broken Bones, Hurt Lucifer, Lucifer Being a Dick, Other, Protective Lucifer, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendcollective/pseuds/rendcollective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Easter piece: Judas and Lucifer have a drunk therapy session on Judas' couch about Judas' boy crush on Jesus, worth, and benevolent betrayal. A te de dias.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. te de dias

**Author's Note:**

> Posting in segments, not necessarily in order! Cookies bit thanks to standingarabian's suggestion.

“You know, they’re burning me in Mexico right now,” Judas tells Lucifer one day. Xe’s drunk as fuck and so is Lucifer, the both of them unwound and limp on Judas’ couch, their feet haloed by empty Corona cans. Luce is an inch from sleep, but xe forces xer eyes open, slides xer glance over to meet Judas’s half-lidded gaze.

Luce snorts softly. “Happy Holy Saturday, motherfucker,” xe slurs. Judas doesn’t respond. “Could be worse, anyway. Could be burning in hell instead. If there actually was fire and brimstone there.” Xe sneaks a glance at Judas. “I could always set that shit up for ya, if you really want.”

Judas huffs, shakes his head. Then, “They make me ugly as possible, stuff me with candy, blow me up with firecrackers.” He drops his beer accidentally. It plinks onto the mound of cans at his ankles. He stares at it, bursts out laughing hysterically. Lucifer rolls xer eyes.

“Pull yourself together, shithead. You’re not the only one with a bad rap.” Xe reaches down and plucks the Corona up, setting it right. “We’re not in Mexico, so stop fucking whining.”

“No, instead we’re in the wonderful fucking nation of Sweden,” Judas slurs, spreading his arms wide, “where no one makes hideous effigies of me and sets them on fire.” He pauses, closes his eyes. “Belize, Chile, El Salvador, Hong Kong, Zambia. Xe told the whole fuckin world I betrayed xem.”

“I didn’t do shit,” Judas says. He snorts, sinks back into the couch, eyes half open. “Didn’t do shit,” he whispers.

Lucifer grabs a pillow, slams it into Judas’ face, and Judas yells in confusion, falling off the couch. “What the fuck?,” he shrieks.  
  
“Shut up,” Lucifer grunts, “whiny little bitch.”

Judas’ eyes narrow into pinches. He struggles to his feet, barely able to stand, but he jabs his finger in Lucifer’s face anyway. “You can’t tell me,” his voice almost liquid with drunken rage, “that after God kicked you outta heaven, you didn’t sit around crying for months. Years, probably. Whining to every little angel you saw. No wonder why half of them left you.” He spits, unaware of Luce’s darkening face, barrels on. “Yeah, you probably bawled yourself to sleep at night too.” Then inspiration hits, and he straightens up one last time, a greasy smile curving across his face. “Probably fucked yourself to sleep moaning xer name, imagining xer touching your -”

And then Lucifer is up and ramming his body into Judas, and they’re on the floor, fists in hair and jaws and knees swinging and voices roaring, the beer cans crunching wildly beneath them. Lucifer’s hands are around Judas’ neck, squeezing, squeezing, and then suddenly: release.

Luce heaves himself off Judas, wiping a long smear of blood from his nose. The man lies spread-eagled on the floor, breathless and clutching his throat. The Coronas stop crunching.

“Fuck you,” Judas wheezes, “fuck you, fuck-” He lapses into silence, and Lucifer disappears into the kitchen. Footsteps, then the steady shhhh of water running, then the distant crk of a towel being torn from its seams. He rolls over, staring at the dust underneath the sofa, swipes a tear from his cheek angrily.

Judas doesn’t hear xem come back, but when xe speaks, xer voice is soft, but tipped. “I’m sorry.”

Judas doesn’t move for half a minute, but finally he pushes himself up and around to face the angel, sheathed in a pool of moonlight by the window. He looks up at the face, the ice pack held against the nose, the eyes, twinkling. “No, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “That was over the line.”

“You got issues, human,” Luce says, and there’s the slightest trace of a smirk in xer voice. Xe slides down to the carpet, props elbows on xer knees. “You need a shrink.”

“I’m not gonna see no shrink,” Judas starts, but Luce interrupts him.

“I know, fucker. So-” xe spreads xer arms wide, and in the moonlight xe looks silvery, arms casting long shadows across the floor. “Talk to me. Tell me. Tell me what happened, that night. All those years ago.” Judas narrows his eyes, his mouth full of hot words, but Lucifer cuts him off. “Do it or I’ll choke you again. You need to get it out, and I’m tired of hearing you whine. And don’t lie. I know all the details, remember?”

So Judas speaks.

 


	2. boy crush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judas relates the days leading up to his betrayal of Jesus - and how his enormous love for xem necessitated it - in a forced therapy session with Lucifer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the works!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

It’s still dark when Judas awakes; he opens his eyes upon a sky rounded and shining overhead, a great black olive rolled onto its side; inset, white pins of light twinkle. Beneath its sweep, Jerusalem sleeps dormant. Soon, he knows, the horizon will flush slowly with cobalt, and then - and then the sun will break the rooftops like yolk spilling from a golden egg, and the sky will dampen with lavender, rose, date. The streets will bubble to life, too: first one merchant setting out his wares, clattering over paved stone, and then in a few minutes another, and another, and subsequently a rush of early-rising vendors all at once, clamoring and shouting greetings and cracking jokes beneath the widening colors of the sky.

But for now, there is this: the world, suspended in a dark amber of hush and lanced with starlight. The rooftop, grainy and uneven under his back. And the man beside him, snoring obnoxiously less than a tefach from his face, a tiny bead of drool gathering in the corner of his mouth, named Jesus.

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(missing segment between these two parts)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Judas turns and slips out the door, fluid but graceless. And maybe it’s a gossamer remnant of his dreams, or a sleepy imagination at work, but the air is flush, suddenly, with the scent of myrrh, aloe. Fresh linen.

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(missing segment between these two parts)

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


	3. all a burning sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judas talks about his hanging and his rescue. Hugs and cookies are unfortunately involved, thanks to Tumblr user standingarabian (ty! :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the works!

He clasps the trunk between his palms, feels that roughness, the messages that come to crowd the lines of his palms. He lifts his leg, finds the first foothold. He climbs.

The noose does not fit well around his neck. The tree limb feels too thick under his feet. The air sounds like it’s listening. Waiting. This is justice. This is revenge. Revenge feels small, and dizzyingly high, and an overwhelming need to vomit and peel off its skin and collapse like a slice of meat into the trunk of the tree.

Revenge jumps and

 

 

                                                 judas  
                                                 is hanging  
                                                 .

 

                                                 the world is black but his eyes are wide open wider _wider_

 

                                                 heat, coiling _is this hell already_  
 _body on fire fingertips buzzing feel like nothing tongue trapped can’t_  
 _find a way out of that mouth. wet squished_  
 _cavern arms to rock. how small the skull is something burning_  
 _everything burning. the smell of smoke coiling like a snake forked-tongue in crushed_  
 _throat. liquid pain ravenous sounds. everything_  
 _collapsing_

 

                                        _ALONE_

 

i can see his face

 

: (blackness blooming like mold angry. powerless now sloppy and licking. consuming. ingesting) :

 

i can see nothing

 

______________________________________________

 

Judas opens his eyes. Lucifer is sitting at the kitchen table, across from him, elbows propped hands clasped, looking half-lidded at the floor tiles. Quiet.

Silence passes Judas tries to breathe.

“So,” Lucifer mutters, “guess you had a shitton pent up in there after all.”

Judas looks up sharply. Lucifer studies the tiles. Ceramic, white, diamonds. 96 in all. Xe had time to count.

Judas tries to talk, but his voice comes out in gnarls. He clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“I asked for it,” Lucifer admits, and now manages by feat to wrench xer eyes up to the tabletop, to Judas’ right forearm, to his wet eyes. It is exhausting. Xe goes back to the floor tiles. Maybe it’s 97. Judas tries to swallow.

“Might as well finish it,” Luce says softly. “If you can,” xe adds quickly. “If you need to.”

 _You already know how it goes,_ come the bubbling words, but his throat feels too tight to speak. Judas closes his eyes.

 

______________________________________________

 

He is still on fire when he wakes. His entire body is drawn up to a point, all his being concentrating itself into a single scream. He cannot open his eyes.

His body is cold. His back hurts. He shifts and his knuckles brush against something. Something brushes against his cheek. His knuckles are wet.

( The sound of someone speaking ) and he jerks like a flame. “ _Who-?_ ” His voice sounds like an animal’s. It sounds like the voice of a strangled pig.

The voice, again: sloping, rich, deep. “I said, _you’re finally awake_.”

He forces his eyes open. Shadows meld, melt. The light gores his head and he cries out.

“I’d keep my eyes shut for a while if I were you, Judas,” lances the voice, and again he flinches. “Doubt your head is feeling up to any other task right now.” A rustling, a shifting. Something husks over his calf.

“Who are you?” Judas tries to say, but his throat is a wineskin turned inside out.

“Just shut up and go back to sleep,” rumbles that voice, and Judas wants so. so desperately to jerk away, open his eyes. _is he dead? is it done is it over? is this hell?_

_worse: is this heaven?_

The movement continues against his leg: splashing sound and wet sensation, soft wrapping motion, leg lifting, calf burning. “I’m tending to your leg, by the way. You broke it. Hard. Bone’s jutting out of the flesh like a stem out of a crushed fruit. Yes, it’s disgusting.”

Judas feels an utter and consuming need to vomit. He obeys that need.

“That’s fucking disgusting too,” comes the hiss, but there is a softness layered within it. “I was kind enough to keep you from hanging yourself. Saw you dangling like a broken tree limb swaying in the wind and climbed up myself to cut you down. I didn’t realize it was a sunrise-to-sunset task.”

Everything in Judas flares. He vomits again, compulsively and repeatedly. His body shakes like an unsteady star.

 

_ALIVE._

 

The voice groans, long, but there is an arm looping across his chest and under his armpit, a hand on his back. When he is done, he is lowered, shuddering, until the world is flat again.

 

                   alive.

 

“ _No_ ,” he whispers.

“Yeah, I know, you’re alive after all, how horrible, what an asshole I am for saving your life, and on and on.” Judas falls silent. too exhausted to grate his voice through his throat. a deeper darkness crowds in, beckons.

“Who are you?” he whispers before sleep washes into him.

the voice seems far away, disdainful. a scoff.

“Lucifer.”

he falls asleep still burning.

  
______________________________________________

When Judas finally opens his eyes, Lucifer isn’t memorizing the tessellations of the kitchen tiles anymore. Lucifer isn’t in front of him anymore. He squints in the darkness. The shadows are falling heavy, swaying veils across the furniture. Amidst them is one figure.

“Luce?”

“I’m listening, Ju,” comes a soft reply, and something creaks terribly. An orange light spills over Lucifer’s feet, illuminates a box in the blackness, and in it-

“ _Are you fucking making cookies?_ ” Judas snaps, and Luce straightens up like lightning, eyes wide.

“What?” Xe steps in front of the oven, shielding the tray of cookies from view.

Judas’ face twists, the heaviness of his memory falling away for an instant. “And is that… my apron?”

“Safety first, Judas,” Lucifer smiles, and adds, quickly, as an afterthought, “they’re chocolate-chip raisin.” Judas stares. “I was listening,” xe protests, and then sobers, the rare moment of defensiveness swallowing itself whole. “You were fucking sobbing on the table. You needed a pick-me-up. And you had enough milk in your fridge, so…” Xe shrugs.

Judas pinches the bridge of his nose.

“But,” Luce says, quieter now, “you have to say that’s a killer way to meet your new best friend for the next several centuries. You know. Getting cut down from a tree and having your broken leg fixed by a demon?”

“It wouldn’t be broken if you hadn’t cut me down,” Judas almost snarls, and then he stops short, closes his mouth quickly in shock. He hadn’t thought the words, just… released them. Unbidden, his vision blurs, shimmers. He swipes at his eyes angrily.

Lucifer materializes in front of him, sets the glinting tray down onto the table with mittened hands. Judas gets one look and laughs more bitterly than he meant to, buries his face in his hands. The cookies are burned black.

Something shifts, and then - pressure on his shoulder. Judas jerks back, whips his head up, but the silhouette moves again toward him, and suddenly - Lucifer is hugging him, both arms wrapping tight, head slotting against shouldertop. Judas is stone still.

“Just let go,” Luce whispers, and Judas stiffens against the tenderness in xer voice. It’s humiliating to hear xem this soft, the flesh of xer voice bare. He must be a fucking mess for Lucifer to be this gentle with him. He doesn’t want this Lucifer. He wants the harsh Lucifer, the spitting snapping swiping Lucifer, the Lucifer who throws tissue boxes at him and flips him the bird after pretending to blow a kiss. This Lucifer is frightening. This Lucifer is too warm.

Judas pulls away, but Luce won’t stop. Xer wrists knock against Judas’ back, fingers latch onto Judas’ sides and pull him back in, and Judas grunts in anger. “Lucifer, just- stop-” but then Lucifer is in his ear, cheek against cheek, rocking him, and whispering, over and over again, “it’s okay. It’s okay, Ju. It’s okay.”

Judas sags against Lucifer. Judas cries. Judas sobs. wracking. shuddering. wails.

and Lucifer holds.


End file.
